Pilgrim's Road

the stated time, but still every door and gate remained locked. Finally thinking I was going mad, or did not know how to interpret the notice, I stopped a passing priest to ask him to elucidate the matter. The man reacted rather like the White Rabbit in Alice , continuing to read his breviary as he quickened his pace, acknowledging that he had heard my request only by the unsmiling and dismissive gesture of a faintly raised chin in the direction of the misleading notice. It was the final straw. I shook the dust of Pamplona metaphorically from my tyres and returned to the Camino. At least it was not raining!
    What reprieved the day was a village on the outskirts of Pamplona where I spent the night. Cizur Menor is on a small hill and boasts the remains of a stronghold of the Knights of St John, an order more usually associated with the Crusades and the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But, together with the Knights Templar, the Hospitallers had also defended the Santiago pilgrimage route, especially after the thirteenth century when Saladin had finally routed the last of the Crusaders from Acre, their sole remaining stronghold in the Holy Land. There was little to see of this fragment of their long eventful history, but in any case the main attraction of Cizur Menor for me was the erstwhile hen house of a local wealthy family.
    The person responsible for transforming this commodious shed into superior lodgings for twelve pilgrims was Isbil Roncal, a lady as immersed in the history and politics of the Camino as Mme Debril in St Jean-Pied-de-Port. Isbil also beavers away on committees for improving the route, and was just about to drive into town to attend a special convention on the subject as I arrived. When I told her how frustrating my visit to Pamplona had been she insisted on taking me back in with her so that a real live pilgrim could be produced to tell various influential people present of how bad an impression the locked cathedral made. Apparently the opening hours were a perennial subject of contention in Pamplona. I had no wish to be dragged into local politics, but was powerless against Isbil’s whirlwind enthusiasm. Almost before I knew what was happening, Roberts was locked up in the refugio and I, still unwashed and sweaty in my pilgrim’s garb, was sitting in a large opulent hall, full of well-dressed people.
    Fortunately there proved to be no free slot where Isbil could produce her pilgrim like a rabbit from a hat. She also realised, kind considerate person that she really was, that since I knew no Spanish, I was not getting a great deal out of the proceedings and she took me off on a tour of Pamplona instead.
    But even with Isbil’s help, the cathedral remained resolutely shut, and the few Spanish Baroque churches that were open did little more than offer me a somewhat greater understanding of El Greco’s world. I would need to feel my way slowly into Spanish ecclesiastical architecture, particularly its statuary, which was all quite new to me.
    What I enjoyed more immediately were the small glimpses into Spanish life that Isbil gave me. We went to a lottery stall to check if she had won anything that week. Clearly she had no shortage of funds, but I was to find that nearly everyone, rich and poor alike, played one or another of the many lotteries in Spain as a normal part of life. It seemed considerably more casual than football pools, a matter of pure chance. After consulting a computer, the clerk told Isbil she had won the equivalent of about half her monthly stake. This was her usual pattern apparently, she collected about half to three-quarters of what she paid out and immediately bought more tickets. She said the stake was trifling and the reward didn’t matter in the least; it was the anticipation that gave her a great deal of pleasure.
    Another revelation came when we were walking along a straight narrow pavement with the high walls of the convent school on one side, which Isbil had attended as a girl. It was part of the route where the bulls are run through the town on their way to the bull-ring. ‘It is so wonderful to see them, so wonderful and so sad too, because they are so beautiful, and you know that in the afternoon they will die,’ she said, trying to explain to me the beauty and satisfaction she found in Pamplona’s famous yearly bull-fighting festival. It seemed strange to hear the proceedings extolled from the victims’ side rather than the matadors’, but perhaps it said